Yangpu service station incorporates industrial heritage
The Power Station Auxiliary Equipment Plant Station covers 800 square meters on the waterfront of Yangpu.
A new flagship service station along the Huangpu River waterfront in Yangpu District has opened to the public, featuring the preserved steel structure of China’s largest auxiliary machine factory dating back to nearly a century ago.
The Power Station Auxiliary Equipment Plant Station, the seventh and biggest service station along the 5.5-kilometer-long waterfront in Yangpu, was launched with a public forum on Monday night.
During a visit to the waterfront last November, President Xi Jinping said: “Cities are built by the people and for the people.” He said urban planning and development must be committed to a people-centered approach and focus on people’s needs.
The Yangpu government aims to create a demonstration of a people-centered city within three years. The newly opened station is part of efforts to achieve the target.
The station was built with the former portal crane structure of the factory at 2200 Yangshupu Road. The predecessor of the factory was the Yangshupu Workshop of Anderson Meyers & Co, founded in 1921. The foreign company built the west plant zone on the riverside region in 1950. It became the state-owned Shanghai Boiler Plant in 1953.
The factory later became the largest power station auxiliary equipment manufacturer, with the most varied products throughout the country.
The building's historic steel structure has been well preserved. It is painted in gray, blue and silver to represent Anderson Meyers & Co, the boiler plant and its future.
People sit in a library on the third floor of the station.
The three-story station covers 800 square meters to offer a resting place as well as exhibition and lecture halls.
The ground floor is the reception hall where customers can receive tourist information and read. The second floor features a “time tunnel,” introducing the city’s first water plant, textile mill, auxiliary equipment factory and fish market in the riverside region.
The “Riverside Parlor” on the second floor also displays Yangpu’s development in terms of its industries, universities and government over the last century.
Visitors can enjoy the scenery of the former Yangshupu Power Plant, once the biggest thermal power plant in East Asia and the city's tallest structure, as well as other examples of the waterfront's industrial heritage.
According to a blueprint, the Yangpu waterfront will be given a brand-new look by the end of this year with improved public spaces, a beautiful ecological environment and optimized public services.
An urban planner gives a lecture in the station.
